No Fluff or Funny Stuff
I'm not going to add pictures to this post. I'm not going to take time to organize my ideas or format the presentation. I'm not going to qualify my statements or provide reference sources to add credence to what I say.
I'm going to tell you right now, and I'm only going to say it this one time: the following is all in my opinion, based loosely on the theories of great minds before me such as Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung. I may take what some consider large leaps from these men's and women's psychology hypothesis and models and I'm not going to pain myself to point out when I veer off on my own hypothesis and assumptions.
The point of this article is to simply get the thoughts out of my mind and onto the blockchain. I want to do it fast and efficient, without giving much energy to anything other than simply getting it from my mind to the screen where I can save it and come back to it in the future, as a means to complete the concept(s), refine it/ them, and, ideally, evolve them into something more and more meaningful and useful.
Feel free to read along, but realize that it's likely in your best interest to treat the following words as a working hypothesis rather than some kind of self-help gospel.
All of this having been divulged, I welcome any constructive criticisms that you may have. I don't care so much for encouraging words :)
1 (self and collective unconscious)
Here's the idea: there's the shared (collective) unconscious of humanity, or "sea of unlimited conscious potential" that our own individual (personal) consciousness is born from, and that is the "backdrop" of our conscious (personal) "self", which is a point within that infinite, collective unconscious with inherent limitations (regarding access to those "unconscious resources") and a relatively defined "cone of freewill" (limited set of choices that can effect physical, emotional, psychological, social, economic, genetic, _____, _____, ..., standing/ consequences/ growth or lack thereof - call this "A").
We naturally identify as the "small point" ("I" or "self") with a limited scope of choices and a finite range of potential (regarding A). While it's true that we are in a way what we are conscious of, to identify solely as that "self" cuts off access to the much bigger "stream of consciousness" that is the collective unconsciousness of humanity, which is also the source of all our potentials and the source of the sense of individuality, itself.
To cut ourselves off from that backdrop of our individual (personal) sense of consciousness is to lose magnitudes of personal power to reach our highest potential and/or control the direction that our life and personal experiences goes.
We only have a very limited and relatively small "bubble of freewill" when we become too strongly identified with the limited, conscious, self, defined by apparent conscious and physical "boundaries", marked by the "space" provided in "mind" and "body", respectively. That bubble of freewill (personal power to change the qualities and circumstances of and for the "self") grows the more we allow the lines (boundaries) of "me" to dissolve and the more we open up to the possibilities that lie in the areas of our consciousness that we are not (yet) aware of, which is, of course, the collective unconscious.
2 (expanded consciousness)
The state of mind at which we can honestly admit, because we truthfully feel, that we don't know what possibilities lie within us, nor can we clearly define who we are (at the core), THIS is the perspective we need to identify with that puts us into the "driver's seat", regarding A. This is the state of consciousness that will allow the "cone of freewill" (number of choices in any present/ future moment) to expand, likely orders of magnitude higher than when we're strongly identified with a limited and defined self-image.
The key is always "attention" and attention is where mental energy is directed and/or focused.
When the state of mind is very "person" (personal/ identified with "self"), then the attention is very focused within a relatively small boundary of consciousness and this greatly limits access to conscious resources by making greater portions of the collective unconscious inaccessible than our potential has set for us. In one sense, this very focused attention is powerful (concentration), but it's very likely that this concentration of mental energy will be destructive to the person, likely on all levels of A, since it's coming from the basis of having limited intuition and/ or "guidance" from the far more knowledgeable and intuitive "Source" (collective unconscious).
To "release" this mental energy, which is the same as saying to "let go" of personal identifications and wants/ desires, is to allow the (apparent) "boundaries" of awareness to expand, more and more into the Source, which gives us personal access to more (self) knowledge and intuition.
This "expansion of consciousness" has many immediate benefits, including feeling more peaceful and "welcome" than we'd usually feel when we're strongly identified with a personal self, but the major one, regarding A, is the wealth of resources for personal growth (spiritual development) and power (ability to control growth in respect to A) that it provides access to.
When we are the "self" (identified with the self-image) we are small and limited. When we are (identified with) consciousness, itself, all our potential as a human, in this particular body, with these particular genes, opens up to us. The possibility to be our best possible self arises.
3 (natural variance in personal tastes and the "purest/ right taste" or "God's taste")
Because this Source (of all personal consciousness), or collective unconscious, is a shared backdrop of all human consciousness, it follows that any "rules" or "laws" that govern what humans perceive as "best" or "most" you-name-the-adjective (beautiful, desirable, successful, powerful, great, etc.) are also shared by every human. You could say that we all have a strong probability of agreeing on what qualifies as being "right" or "good" or "desirable" or you-name-it, because we each develop our own personal consciousness from the same Source.
Of course, we also have our own unique, albeit somewhat amorphous, conscious boundaries, established by how much power we take over our freewill (or give away by not being aware that we have such power) and how identified we become with the personal self, among other factors, which is why we tend to each have personal variants as to what we consider the best examples to those aforementioned qualifiers (we know this as "personal taste").
Some people may have a relatively perverse or abnormal sense of what qualifies as beautiful or name-your-adjective, but this is simply the consequence of the natural variance that exists in the births of personal consciousness out of the sea of the collective unconscious.
You could say that the purest, "most right", definition of what qualifies as what (adjective) is in the collective unconscious (also the "highest subject" or you could even say "God") and that each of us individual "selves" (personal consciousness) has a somewhat distorted (or "filtered") view, regarding how we define them in our own personal experience and "taste", depending on how much our self-image deviates from the "ideal" that is the Source, among other factors.
As with most anything that we find in nature, each "member" of the "sets" or "subsets" of you-name-it (type of species as one example) has a variance of qualities within it and, if analyzed enough for a sufficient amount of time, it can be determined with relatively high statistical significance what the probability is that any random member within that set or subset is of x quality, or within a range of variance in respect to that quality.
To use humans as an example, we know from analyzing the data of human adult growth that humans range within a specific set of heights and that we have a very high probability of being between 5 feet 4 inches tall and 6 feet 4 inches tall, a very low probability of being below 4 feet tall and virtually no possibility of being over 10 feet tall. We can say this with confidence because we have a large sample (of over billions of people, past and present) to analyze and draw those conclusions from.
The above example is further strengthened by the observation that adult human height falls within a normal "bell" distribution, in which about 68% of humans fall within one standard deviation of the mean (average) height, 95% are within two standard deviations, 99.7% are within three standard deviations, etc.
To bring this back to personal consciousness (in respect to the universal/ collective unconscious), we will find that the same holds true. Everyone's personal tastes (regarding what they consider beautiful, or good, or what-have-you) varies to some degree, but the variations are all within predictable ranges and the distribution is normal, just like with adult human height. Just like with height, you'll find some extreme outliers that are well outside of the probabilistic range, but they are few and far between and we can filter them out without much affecting the mean (since they are so outnumbered by members that fall within the expected range).
4 (depending on choice from the self perspective vs. wisdom of the "right crowd" in the collective unconscious)
Now that we've established the natural variation that exists in "personal taste" and that there IS a right and wrong answer to what is considered as what (adjective), determined by "God's taste" - the purest view of the world from the totality of the collective unconsciousness, of which all of our consciousness is birthed, we can move on to the dilemma of what is the best choice to make in any moment and/or what is the highest image to aspire towards.
It was established in #3 that each individual's tastes deviates from God's tastes to at least some small degree and that, as a whole, humanity falls within a normal distribution around personal tastes.
While it could be argued that people having a high probability of agreeing that X is _______ (fill in the adjective) isn't necessarily proof that a hypothetical God (highest, most right, subject) would also agree, there is still value in aligning with a majority perception.
For example, looking at the case of a single, heterosexual male who's on the lookout for a potential mate, it's useful for him to have an accurate idea as to what women of the pedigree that he aims to attract are attracted to. Moreover, it greatly increases the odds of being romantically fulfilled if you have your personality and psychology aligned with the type of man who will attract the type of woman that you desire. Otherwise we are walking into the situation somewhat like a blind man and likely to follow the fate of a leaf in the wind. Relying on solely his own personal feel for "what's what", he may get "lucky" or he may experience hell and about anything in between, depending mostly on where he sits with respect to the majority on the personal tastes curve.
However, if the man mentioned in the above example draws from the "wisdom of the right crowd" (from those humans, past and present, who were successful and/or were in full knowledge of what best works to fulfill that desire), he's very likely to be on point with his beliefs and his behaviors. But simply reading books about what most "experts" agree or drawing conclusions from carefully observing other people's tendencies or preferences will only achieve so much and may require a lot of time and effort to absorb and to then integrate into one's own psychology and aimed (behavioral) adaptation(s).
Besides the possibility of getting inaccurate information that's not really representative of collective human tastes, there's also the possibility of struggling to effectively integrate or adapt, even to informative, reliable data. You might find that year's of time and energy can be wasted trying to "become" the right type of man, for any number of reasons. You may come up against emotional or psychological barriers that make it difficult or (apparently) impossible for you to progress beyond a certain point of your desired growth, or you may come to a point that you discover you don't really desire being that type of man at all.
All these failings come back to relying on the limited "self" to get answers and to develop solutions, which is what most of humanity is doing most of the time, which is why I believe the majority of people are also relatively miserable most of the time.
What would happen if we were to pose the question to the collective unconscious: how do I best approach this desire to attract what I deem to be the highest quality of a woman? But don't just leave it at asking a question to a "dark" infinite expanse of unknowable potential that is the unconscious ocean. Rather, make a clear intention to set up a relationship between yourself (conscious awareness) and the collective unconscious such that it be a library that accurately pulls the documents and files that you need in your consciousness, from sources that It (the totality of the collective human unconscious) knows are in the know, and to download them into you.
But do you have the power to make such a demand and is there really a power within you to draw all this from the Source?
I'm working from the assumption that the answers are "yes" and "yes", but any good scientist knows that experiments are necessary to substantiate such hypothesis.
Assuming that this power is inherent in consciousness, there arises another important question: what is the "right question" to ask? Even if we're to focus on A (mentioned all the way back in #1), what is the right question to ask, to fulfill every aspect of our potential (socially, financially, emotionally, psychologically, romantically, etc.) to the highest possible degree?
5 (the importance of the "right question")
If we start from the false assumption that it's in our best interest to become X (name your adjectives) or to possess Y (name your nouns), it's very likely that we will ask the wrong questions of the Source, leading to less than ideal results, perhaps leaving us off worse for ware than before we asked for the transformation(s).
It is within our freewill to allow ourselves to choose the path of "becoming" or "acquiring", and we will have limitations on both of those things but their potentials can, and with the right question, will, be fulfilled to their highest. We can also draw from the wisdom of the many hundreds, or thousands, or, in some cases million, of great men and women, who've uploaded their memories and experiences to the collective unconsciousness of humanity, from the perspective that we know the right questions to ask of them.
The latter is likely to be the best approach to get what we're convinced that we want or that is best for us. In other words, it's the best way to shape life as one's ego desires, which is obviously likely to come with many unexpected drawbacks and pitfalls.
However, there is what we think is best for us and what is ACTUALLY best for us that we may not be aware of and perhaps not even capable of ever being conscious of. What does that look like? What does it mean to not be aware of what is actually best for us? What does that life look like? Who is the person that comes out of that?
Now those questions just asked are what will bring out the highest potential, from God's perspective (the totality of the collective unconscious). Whether they bring out the highest potentials of all the categories of A, that isn't so clear and it may be the case that certain aspects of A (what our ego tends to categorize as important qualities of life) have to suffer in order for the "greater good" to manifest in oneself. You could frame this as giving up the material (world) for spiritual growth (wholeness).
Thus, the great dilemma of what path to choose: -- 1.) fulfilling your personal desires and 2.) living as God (your purest nature, as a pure reflection of the totality of the collective unconscious - "God's Mind") would have you. -- comes with the realization that you are more than the limited self.
There are really two, or more, highest potentials (I see it as infinite, but with three likely "limiters" and only one TRUE highest):
1.) the highest potential that you believe is so, due to the limitations of your ego, the circumstances (or apparent circumstances) surrounding you and the consequent desires and fears that come out of that (this is the least likely to leave you feeling fulfilled in the long run but the most likely to garner excitement in the short-term, due to being aligned with what the personal self wants but likely out of alignment with what the "higher intelligence" of the collective unconscious knows that you need).
2.) the highest potential that is the consensus of what you deem to be great men or women, limited to their collective egos and consequent desires (this is likely to be more aligned with God's desires, due to the wisdom of the crowd element, but this doesn't have to be so).
3.) the highest potential that is the consensus of what the higher intelligence determines are the great men and/or women of the past and present (this will be closest to the actual highest potential of the three mentioned, but will likely still miss a bit due to the collective influence of those men/ women's ego desires).
4.) the ACTUAL highest potential, as determined by the totality of the highest intelligence, which embodies all of the collective unconscious.
6 (EGO: the only limiting factor to the achieving the "best self")
The common denominator to limiting one's potential in all of the above four "varieties of highest potential" are one's ego - the identification with a personal self and working with the idea that there are "other" selves (this concept of "self" and "other" implies competition for resources to at least some degree, which, itself, guarantees some amount of straining and suffering).
Because we have more than enough evidence to conclude, essentially 100% assured, that we will die, someday, probably within the next 100 years a the most, we have great reason to fear time passing and to attach a great amount of importance to staying physically healthy. We try to avoid the inevitable that is our death by prolonging this life as much as we can and/or ignore it completely by distracting ourselves with various activities or thoughts.
In the end, each person is likely to accumulate many years and much energy to the fear of death, alone, either through contemplation or suppression.
But do we really die? What dies? Who dies?
Coming from the perspective of the collective unconscious, only the personal self dies, which means that "ego death" is the only death.
The perspective from pure awareness, which what we really are, is that attention is captured within a "mind", from within the perspective of a "body", looking out from the eyes and listening out from its ears, etc, and that attention is entirely released such that the boundaries expand to both dissolve the identification with some personal "I" inside of a body to a pure sense of being conscious, but without specific boundaries.
As alluded to earlier, all quality of experience and sense of identification, or lack thereof, comes down to attention (Where is it directed? Is it contained?). The "tighter" it gets the more personal everything feels within the small space that the mental energy is focused (presumably on the sense of "self" or and "I" that is inseparable from a body and a mind) and the more alien everything outside of that small conscious "bubble" (conscious awareness) feels.
If that attention is "set free", then a natural expanse into the prior unconscious occurs and, with it, the illusory concepts of what is or isn't needed to feel more whole.
Thus, it is only in this "stateless state" of mind (releasing attention to allow conscious expansion) that we can have any real sense of what we really need, if anything.
You can read or listen to stories about men and women who have overcome their egos, if only for a brief period of time, and how wonderful and freeing that experience was for them. You can also hear a greater number of stories about people who've faced "bad trips" and personal hells when coming up to the amorphous "line" that separates the ego from the "endless unknown" of the collective unconsciousness, which only demonstrates one's level of attachment to the personal sense of self (fear of ego death).
A common thread to the former lot is that they're left with no desires. They feel perfectly content, even blissful. All this regardless of the circumstances that surround their lives. They feel oneness with all of life and even the planet as a whole. They can't distinguish between a "self" and an "other", or those two things are at least blurred to a point that most of us (who haven't experienced a true ego death) could never manage to relate.
Could it be that they're already perfect as they are? I contend that only those in the pure awareness of the collective unconsciousness can say for sure. And I would also say that they are as close to perfection (their ACTUAL highest potential as the manifest human) as any and all limiting factors could ever allow for as long as they are in that stateless state of being.
But how can we achieve that stateless state when so much fear and attachment to desires stands between this "apparent I" that is the ego (self) and the "true self" that is the unlimited expanse of the collective unconsciousness? How to correct our identification? How to release the attention? How do we let go, once and for all?
And should we even try? Can we?
Maybe there are desires that simply must be fulfilled and life lessons that must be learned before we even stand a chance to finally dissolve (the ego) into pure awareness and the sense of wholeness? How can we know?
7 (trusting in God's will and "REAL prayer")
Realize that my use of the word "God" is counter to a lot of religion's definition of that word/concept (particularly Christianity's). When I say God, I only mean to say the purest, One, Alone Awareness that exists, which is the sole Source of our own consciousness and the final "Home" for every person (or "soul", if you prefer).
Prayer, as it relates to this definition of God, which I'm convinced is the TRUE GOD, is to work on developing trust between yourself (the person/ego that you take yourself to be) and this infinite expanse of consciousness that both contains you and presents you with an infinite unknown, within which all potentials are contained. This may involve anything from thoughts (speaking to the collective unconscious) to feeling and emoting ("sending intention" to the "great, powerful, unknown" source of all manifestation) to using visualization techniques (to better relate through symbolism with the "other side" or to better articulate for yourself and/or that "higher self" what it is that you're trying to accomplish, regarding the relationship and/or questions that you want answered), etc.
You can use prayer to have your own personal (ego) desires fulfilled. You can also use prayer as a method to help dissolve (overcome) the ego, itself. The possibilities for how to use prayer and how to benefit from it are literally limited only by our imagination, which, itself, is limited only by how identified we are with limited ideas that we hold onto about ourselves.
To meditate, in the highest sense, is to try to establish a direct communion between oneself (limited ego) and the true self (pure awareness that is limitless) in which either no questions are asked (full trust is placed in the higher intelligence to do with the meditation what it will) or a single question is concentrated on and offered up to the higher intelligence to answer (it's generally accepted among many spiritual circles that the "highest question" to as is "who am I?"). As I see it, it only differs from prayer in that it is focused on establishing a communication or even set of demands (with the "higher self"), while meditation is more about developing a connection to that which one truly is, that happens to be the same power which can, and will in right circumstances, answer our prayers.
In other words, both proper prayer and meditation accomplish the same thing in the long-run - a dissolving sense of separation between the "self" and the "totality" (the dissolution of ego).
The most powerful prayer and the most potent meditation comes with an increasing level of assurance that the higher intelligence exists and that you are IT and trust that this higher intelligence will either: a.) answer your prayer if you put one forth or b.) do what is actually best for you.
There's nothing more powerful than a being who has overcome all fears and that state of being can only come by something stronger than mere conviction that death is an illusion. This only comes through surrendering one's ego to the greater; the "beyond"; the "unknown".
Whether we want a taste of that as the ego, in a world where we better control our fate, or as a totally free being that has no concern or care about a personal life or what direction it might be aiming, or anything in between, the choice is always ours. Whether we meet this choice as a small point of awareness that is severely limited or the totality of the collective unconsciousness that is utterly limitless comes down to what we choose to do with our attention.
I may come back to add to this or edit it in the future or I may not
I don't really have any plans for the future of this document, nor any idea if or how I will use it in the future.
For now, I'm just happy that it's saved somewhere, where it can be looked at again in the future, if need be.
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